From one to the other, it hardly seems real that anyone should traverse that amount of appellations. But here I sit on the grandest and strangest of them all. ‘High Priestess.’

Grandest and strangest Zulfi, am I. A Grand Zulfi. Let me take one end and marry it to the other, because I am in no way suited for the task that my father and brethren believe I am worthy to inherit.

My head is a mess of emotions that induce nausea when I linger on them for too long. In the morning I have to press for answers from Zun’dra. I need new books. I need new robes. I need my father’s advice.

There was silence for a few moments to weigh the option of a conciliatory gesture or a final imprecation under my breath. As there was no clear choice, I sagged into the sand further and rubbed my aching legs. ‘Yes. You’re angry, Dzivah can tell. But I couldn’t be sure at first that I was not hallucinating, and by the time I knew I was not dreaming, it seemed too remote, too ridiculous to even speak of.’

‘And yet we speak of it here, hundreds, thousands of footsteps away.’ He growls. I feel Drek’tal’s frustration. The Isles, ostensibly the home of my blood, seems a foreign and confusing place to end up now that I know very little of my own blood.
My sister ‘Laikah. Is she even mine? Papa, not mine? Mama?

The mon in the jungle knew far too much. His voice, tremulous through wood and smoke, spoke a history I couldn’t verify but could believe. He told me that he as my father. He told me that fate had put everything in place for me, to enable me to claim my birthright.

What rubbish! What madness! And yet his voice, his scent… whether a parent holds you in their arms or holds you accountable for your own actions, either way you feel you are a tiny, vulnerable, and insouciant creature with the horizon of your life stretching beyond their furrowed brow. And when he spoke my birth name, that feeling squeezed down on my chest and swaddled me in emotions I hadn’t felt for a long time. If blood is drawn to its own kind, then it explains everything. And if this is magicka, then it explains far more.

I need to be careful, and Drek’tal knows it.
We need leads. We need to know what has happened since we’ve been gone.

Procuring supplies for a trip of unknown duration attracted some strange questions, and put me in touch with strange merchants. And to whom do these merchants owe their livelihoods? The wretches, the villains, the unscrupulous… But it still came as a surprise to see him, even if it shouldn’t have. Drek’tal: as strong, jagged and ghostlike as the mountains he was born on. With a lover, there are things that you can sense before your eyes have time to recognize them. His massive head of dreadlocked hair and his runed tusks weren’t nearly as much a giveaway as his hulking gait and casual dismissal of everyone else’s want of space.

Instinctively, I ducked and pulled my cowl closer over my face. But, as I said… there are things that a lover can sense. He smelled me before I had time to turn around.

‘Magi’.

‘Primal.’

And so it goes. One is never without the painful reminder of all their fuckups, and Drek’tal is my most uniquely bitter living memory. I’d already had the privilege of seeing the rest killed.

‘Where are you going?’

I shrugged at first, not looking to pique his curiosity. I darted through rabbit holes of small talk, evasive and recalcitrant. Eventually the sight of something absurd on the street made us turn to one another and laugh, the way two souls with a shared sense of the ridiculous can laugh and spare each other the indignity of being alone in the world. I knew then that I wasn’t walking out of Orgrimmar alone.

Where we go now, however, is not determined purely by the Primal. I have a need that companionship and intimacy do not stand to solve. What must be done is clear: the Rushka is a gift, the Primal is a pillar. I will take all my environment and chance gives me, in hope of finding my own way.

Time passes easily, without the reluctance that it would have in more trying times. My duties have been disharged, as I have been deemed unfit for performance due to my failing health. With little choice but to live off of a meagre stipend until I either die or find further work, I became relegated to the Trollish slums demarcated by our kindly Orcish masters here in Orgrimmar.

What a sick fucking joke.

The opinion that I should accept this foul circumstance is beyond my comprehension. It isn’t reasonable to me. Even in Dalaran, where I was a curious oddity, I was entitled to a bed, adequate warmth, and privacy. Here, it is different. This is the Horde to which our people ‘belong’.

Ohiska and I greet one another in the early hours, wandering aimlessly through the streets to escape the heat and the squalor. He is less open about his frustration, though I can tell that being here incenses him greatly. Outside of the tribe, outside of an occupation, we have come across the sad truth of our people’s diaspora. We are homeless here, and even worse, I find myself no better off swathed in make-believe ‘freedom’ then when I was a slave.

After seeing little sister Lily’na and finding her in good health but poor outlook, I began to ruminate. Eventually this cost me much sleep. For nearly fourteen days I have slept only briefly. My exhausted ears ring loudly, and my eyesight is blurred to the point where only the faces of my close circle are discernable. All else is a smoky haze through which I navigate, half awake. And in this time, the visions come.

At first I took this to be a sign of sleep deprivation. I tried the usual remedies, and sought healing practitioners. I even resorted to the use of a general noticeboard.

No respite from this strange malady comes, however, and so Ohiska has entreated me to seek an answer away from the city. To this end, he painted a rush’ka, and adorned it painstakingly in the images of Damballah and the raptor. He thought it best that I have a reference to the Loa who has favored me previously, though I understand he was reluctant to paint such an effigy on a tool designed to aid me.

And so it has been three days that I sit here, days away from Orgrimmar, under the shade of the palms of the Echo Isles. My writing hand is shaky, my vision is poor. But I shall take no serious effort to sleep, nor return, until the answer to my question comes.

I didn’t think I deserved to live at all. If Ohiska had not found me, I’d be dead. I’d spent my last few bursts of fire trying to extinguish anything that came close to trying to help me.

I don’t remember how long I was in Booty Bay for. I lay in a cot, depleted of my will to go on, for some time. At some points I was spoon fed, quite literally, by Brother Ohiska. I didn’t think I could get any lower than to have so weak and small a male of our kind be the one to care for me.

Nursed back to my full health, I’m feeling very sober. In many more ways than the obvious; the intoxication of the last few months had left me unable to think clearly, but now I see. I was meant to live. I was not meant to die, even if I have always believed that my life’s end shall come at my own hands.

Work is scarce in Booty Bay, and I fear I’ll take to petty thievery again to live the life I’ve become accustomed to.

Pride dictates I shouldn’t turn to my old brethren, but a strange compulsion is driving me to seek out Brother Ohiska. It’s as though the fates are conspiring to end me of my predilection for bad behaviour.

The entry seems to devolve into a stream of unintelligible curse words, then a break:

The tribe has dispersed. I suppose I didn’t see the signs because I never cared one way or another. Senses heightened elsewhere led to distraction.

I’ll settle in Orgrimmar for now. I won’t return to Sen’jin, nor the Undercity. Time for a fresh start.

It wasn’t pertinent to involve myself in the inner workings of the tribe. For all its interesting characters and the communal safety it offered, it still represented a political system of dominance and repression that I have come to loathe in our culture; the justification of feminine subjugation with the need to propel the race forward in number.

Bah, I say.

Drek’tal (mercifully) gone, the tribe (mercifully) in no position to lay claim to my (unbeknownst to them) lack of reproductive organs. I can get about with the business of sorting out my life once more.

If you seek to pay for your transgressions in my blood, and not your own, then is there not a fundamental flaw in your methods? Apologies have become pointless, vapid, hollow expressions employed merely so that one may continue to garner favor in a one-sided relationship. This is how it has come to devolve between Drek’tal and I.

I cannot tolerate myself any longer if I utter the words ‘I forgive you‘. It has become as meaningless as when he says ‘I am sorry‘. The Primal is never sorry. The Primal makes no apologies for anything that he has ever done. So why should he start now?

He tears the heart out of our meal and swallows it without thinking. When I protest to his selfish act, he retorts. ‘My kill, my right.’ Truly, this is his logic for each and every willful act. It is his right to do something, simply because he sets the rules himself.

And what of my rights, then? To my autonomy, my freedom, the entitlement I feel to be respected by a mate who is my equal?

He has torn out my heart. He thinks he has the right to hold it, still beating, in his palm, and savor my agony before he devours it whole. To this, he will never be sorry. He will never convince me that he is anything but willfully disrespectful of me.

I do not owe him anything at all. Idle heart, no longer beating, come back to me. You shall start to beat once this mon is gone forever.